Tag Archives: gluten free

TMI yes, I realize that’s a wrong spelling of the author’s first name and is also not meant in the figurative sense but literally. This book does have over 500 pages after all.

So first off Timothy Ferriss’ 4-Hour Body starts as a diet book, not as in “starve yourself diet”, but “change your eating habits diet”. It states firstly to NOT EAT GRAINS. Any grains!!! This is even a step up from The Wheat Belly (full review here: in which only modern (gluten containing) grains were not allowed.

Sounds like The Paleo Diet Lose Weight and Get Healthy By Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat at first glance and even when you read the recipes provided at the end of the aforementioned blog, you see fruit mentioned as part of the suggestions for that week long menu. But Ferriss does not eat fruit! In his suggestion -contrary to the paleo diet- one is not allowed fruit due to blood sugar raising attributes. For fiber in his ALL meat, ALL veggies, ALL the time (WAIT: it’s not all the time, because each week one is allowed a cheat day, where one can consume anything one likes!!!) he eats legumes like lentils and beans. So this “all the time” isn’t true and a cheat day sounds awesome to keep you on track. But once more back to the blog above: It is mentioned that -especially if you are sensitive to gluten, but even for everyone else looking to improve themselves all around- only after 15 days is the last gluten flushed out of your system, so to see improvement to stick with the total gluten free for at least a month to six weeks. So there goes your cheat day! Also the NO FRUIT is what I have the biggest issue with and replacing them with legumes that make you gassy and bloated (when all you want is feeling better and thinner?).

To stick with this book though it takes a lot. I started off laughing about the disclaimer in the beginning and the authors writing style is highly entertaining. So there’s that. But then there are also numerous cases in which facts are contrasting each other, giving the plain reader a wrinkled brow as to which of the stated facts they should be following now. Entertainment value aside, there is so much data in this book, that it gets tiresome to read at times to the point of page flipping. Which of course is why the author recommends in the beginning of the book to look at the chapter index, read only the first few mandatory and then flip forward to whichever head line looks interesting to the individual reader. Want to lose weight? Already basically covered but keep reading here___ Want to put on muscle? Keep reading on page___ Better sex? Page____. That is a recipe for information overload obviously; and for the mentioned differences in facts as a) you have to do things differently to lose weight than to put it on (though only marginally) and b) many different specialists are quoted and case studies summarized to account for alternative approaches to the covered themes. This book is intended to be a recipe for total overhaul, but not all of us want to be good at everything or plain don’t have the time or means to even attempt to. And speaking of time: Obviously it takes time to read this big a book and after the initial fun of reading the first chapters one runs out of time, patience and interest in pursuing the remainder of the book and finds one selves flipping through it, loosing momentum and possibly the spark that gets lit in the first chapters. This not a bad book makes! As just with the disclaimer, if one sticks with Ferriss’ reading instructions (only to cover the mandatory chapters and then flip to those of interest to the individual reader), this issue is easily avoided. One can always pick up the book later and go back to a chapter that sounded somewhat intriguing.

I did not like the diet for a few simple facts: No fruit(!?), too many supplements to get to that “superhuman” state, too repetitive in its initial stages and conflicting messages about grains (so they are not good for you but on your cheat day you eat a few chocolate croissants?).